Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has forecasted global solar demand in 2019 could increase by as little as 15% in 2019, reaching 125GW of new installations, up from preliminary forecasted and revised figures of 109GW for 2018.

The economics of rural electrification using microgrids should be considered an investment for the future, akin to how Silicon Valley tech providers plough money into initially loss-leading products and services, the chief of developer and manufacturer Solar Philippines has said.

Daystar Power, a clean energy supplier based in Africa, has teamed up with Nigerian retail banking group Unity Bank to power the latter’s switch away from diesel, using renewable energy and energy storage.

The distributed renewable energy (DRE) sector, necessary in a world with millions of people without power, is being held back by a chronic shortage of skilled workers. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) has just 16,000 people working in renewable energy in a region with 600 million un-electrified people, according to the founders of a new campaign aiming to fill this skills gap.